FOUR STAGES OF HEALING
I know. Getting started is the hardest part of therapy. You’ve been struggling, it seems like, forever. You keep bumping into the same obstacles day in and day out. Each day feels like a struggle just to finish, and even then, you toss and turn trying to get to sleep. Will this downward cycle ever end?
Yes. With your dedication, hard work, and the right fit for a therapist, you can turn your downward cycle into an upward one.
Also, while it feels like you are nuts, you are not. You are not even alone. In the United States, 20% of the adult population is walking around with diagnosable behavioral health issues. With the advent of the pandemic several years ago, that number went to 30%. For children and teens, that total exceeds 40%. What to do? What to do?
Not surprisingly, the internet is a great place to start. You have options. A blessing from the pandemic has been health professionals opening up to work with patient by telephone, on-line, and by zoom, in addition to coming to their office.
And yet, research shows that 75% of the healing process comes from the doctor/patient relationship. Only 25% comes from any particular treatment strategies or interventions your therapist might bring to the table.
Of course you can google behavioral health practitioners located in your area. Size up their pitch and pick one. However, that does sound a bit radical. More folks open up, begrudgingly, to a friend, family, or confidante. Some don’t open up at all, but rather, are gently (or not so gently) confronted by a loved one to “get help or else!”
When starting therapy, remember. You’ve hired a health professional to care for you. If you are feeling unhelped, not getting what you want, you can fire your therapist. Goodness of fit, a sense of feeling heard, working with someone the “gets me,” are essential for healing.
In my new book, The Healing Journey: Overcoming Adversity on the Path to the Good Life, my goals are to help you get a good start, understand the context of effective therapy, and embrace the healing process. Toward those goals, I identify a new treatment strategy, mentalligent psychotherapy.
My colleague, Dr. Kristen Lee, LICSW, coined the term, mentelligence™, to identify the mental and intelligence functions of the brain in creating lasting change and healing. Where intelligence is the hardware of the brain, mental is the software. Both interact consistently to generate neuroplasticity, which creates new neural pathways that secure behavioral change.
I share with my readers the four stages of healing in therapy. First, all patients begin therapy with Unconscious Ignorance. That is, you don’t know that there is a problem, and you don’t know that you don’t know. In this case, ignorance is not bliss. It’s just how you are used to being.
In the second stage of healing, you become aware of issues, either by epiphany or by someone busting your chops. With this awareness, you enter the stage of Conscious Ignorance. Here, you are informed, you want to change your thinking, feeling, and circumstances, but you don’t know how to do it. It is your therapist’s job in this stage to give you options, help you understand the impact of your words and actions on yourself and others, and equip you to make wanted changes and to heal.
The bulk of your therapy involves a dance between the stage of conscious ignorance and the next stage, that of Conscious Awareness. Your therapist gives you tools for healing and you practice using them. Your appointments become your safe place to try out new words and actions, appreciating their positive impact on your mood and circumstances. You also risk sharing your new self with your significant others and friend group to experience benefits in your real world. It may feel awkward and foreign at first, but you begin to get the hang of it.
Toward the end of your therapy, you will notice a significant uptick in your use of healing tools in your day-to-day lifestyle. This marks your transition from the stage of conscious awareness to the last stage of the healing process, that of Unconscious Awareness. Here, you appreciate that your hard work in therapy has transformed your life and your relationships. You embrace the new you. Your new neural pathways are secured and your old, unhelpful neural pathways have withered. As adversity happens, in any kind, you overcome it, find the blessing in it, and continue on your path to the good life, with good stress management and strong resilience.
If I’ve piqued your interest and you want to find out more about mentalligent psychotherapy and the four stages of healing, go to amazonbooks.com. Put my name, Jonathan C. Robinson, Ph.D., or my book title, The Healing Journey: Overcoming Adversity on the Path to the Good Life, in the search box, and order your copy today.
Blessings,
Dr. Jon